XBMC for Linux on AllWinner A10 Devices? It Works! (Sort of)

Following the lack of support by AllWinner for the video engine libraries (CedarX), I had more or less given up on hope XBMC for Linux would ever run properly on AllWinner A10/A13 hardware. But recently, I found out some progress had been made using existing libs, and saw the Pengpod Tablet video showing XBMC running in Linux fairly smoothly.

So I decided to cross-compile XBMC by following the instructions available at http://linux-sunxi.org/XBMC and trying to run it in Linaro ALIP 12.04 rootfs in my Mele A1000. Finally, I managed to cross-compile XBMC, but the performance was very poor in the GUI (6 to 12 fps) and I was unable to play videos and my serial console was flooded with messages like:

[DISP] not supported image0 pixel sequence:216 in img_sw_para_to_reg

[Update: I managed to have XBMC Linux running & playing videos on Mele A1000 by using j1nx image (rootfs + kernel). I would first exhibit the exact same issue I had, but those where fixed:

1. To solve the video playback issue I had to modify script.bin as follows:

fb0_pixel_sequence = 1
fb0_scaler_mode_enable = 0

2. I add to modify XRES/YRES (1024×768) in S99xbmcinit in order to start the UI when outputting to VGA with this image or EGL would failed to initialize.

XBMC (alpha) is currently optimized for 720p (1280×720) resolution, so although I get up to 12 fps using VGA output with 1024×768 resolution, the UI is rendered at over 40 fps when the Mele outputs to HDMI @ 720p.

In this post, I’ll still describe the steps I followed to build and run XBMC in Linaro ALIP rootfs (and hopefully I’ll eventually find the reason behind the performance issue), ans show Jasbir results with XBMC armhf on the Hackberry.

XBMC ARMHF Build Instructions

Since we want to run XBMC armhf, we’ll first need a Linux image with an armhf rootfs. I’ll use Lianro ALIP 12.10 rootfs, following the hardware packs instructions. Insert an SD card in the build machine, and make it bootable:

After a few seconds, you should now be able to access XBMC user interface. In case you have issues, you can have a look at the log in ~/.xbmc/temp/xbmc.log.

XBMC A10 ARMHF Build on the HackBerry

First of all, this is a development version, so you should not expect a perfect user experience. There should be bugs, crashes, missing features and performance might not be optimal yet.

If you want to have a quick look, watch Jasbir video of XBMC armhf on the HackBerry board.

I did try to use Jasbir image on the Mele A1000 (After updating U-Boot and U-Boot SPL) to evaluate the current status of XBMC on A10, but I could only see XBMC boot logo before the system reboot, as XBMC actually terminates, after apparently thinking I pressed some key….

At the current stage of development, XBMC for Linux appears to work pretty well on AllWinner A10 devices, but there is still more work to do before users can enjoy it on their devices.

UI performance is not so far from my Raspberry PI, so it seems very usable. I’m crossing fingers on this!. A big goal would be to have support for most common external wifi usb adapters, specially for A10 hdmi sticks with bad internal wifi implementations (as far as I know that will be all).

If you’ve modified a1x-media-create.sh for 7z detection, you can submit a pull request if you wish.

For the console redirection for tee, it will not do what I want, which is only output the steps on the console, and all command line messages to the log file.

I suppose eventually most people will use the sunxi-bsp – https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-bsp.
But for now there’s no hwpack for Mele VGA and Mele server. So my images can still be useful for a big longer.